I decided we needed a generic thread to help people who haven't folded before or haven't folded in a long while to join the effort, so here it is.

If just brew it! or farmpuma want to rename this thread, that would be fine by me. And if it's useful, perhaps it can be stickied.

The fact is that Folding@Home on your video card (GPU) is probably the easiest way for most people to contribute, and because the client is generally unobtrusive and the deadlines for return are generally longer than other high point producing Work Units, many people could run their machines part time and still successfully return Work Units in time to meet those deadlines, while helping the effort, and with it helping our team, Team 2630.

I've got a WU on one of my video cards/GPUs, a GTX 260, that isn't due until almost 15 days from now. It will finish in less than 90 minutes, but that's because it's a dedicated machine. Since the total folding time for it is under 2.5 hours, it's fairly obvious that most TR readers could probably run that WU and finish it long before the deadline just by running it while they read TR.

DancinJack has added useful links in the next post, so that my entry isn't useless by itself now.

So, why don't you all join? Ask any question you like, no matter how foolish you may think it will sound, and someone will be glad to help (if we notice it, anyway... sometimes, unfortunately, we leave people unreplied to for extended periods because we don't notice new threads or replies to old ones).

It's a good charity that helps medical science, and the competition is a good deal of fun. Those who don't think they can necessarily produce much could join our team under the username UnitedGerbilNation and be a part of a greater whole who at one time were among the top few producers on our team, and maybe you can make it that way again. Come on and join!

I thought I'd add another useful piece of information. Most users who are just starting with folding would probably be best off using the system tray client, especially those running Vista or Windows 7, since it doesn't open a window to bother you.

What's more, you can open the system tray icon and pause or shut off the client if you find it necessary for gaming or some other application that heavily uses the GPU.